[NLA] Celebrating 35 years of the AELS

[Thomas Sticht]

Research Note                             February 7th,
2002                                                           
Tom Sticht

Thirty-five years of the Adult Education and Literacy System 
of the United States of America

At the end of the present Fiscal Year (FY 2002), eight U. S. Presidents,
tens of thousands of our nation’s federal and state legislators,
hundreds of thousands of teachers,  and hundreds of thousands of
volunteers will have participated in providing 35 years of publicly
funded education for more than 70 million students in the Adult
Education and Literacy System of the United States.  

Planting the Seed

When the Economic Opportunity Act  of 1964 came up for legislative
review in 1966, the National Association of Public School Adult
Educators of the National Education Association and the Adult Education
Association of the United States of America (now the American
Association for Adult and Continuing Education) lobbied to move the
Adult Basic Education program from the poverty programs of the Office of
Economic Opportunity to the educational programs of the U. S. Office of
Education, where it had been administered all along. They also argued to
change the name from the Adult Basic Education program to the Adult
Education Act, thereby broadening its applicability beyond basic
education. Congress agreed to these changes, and, in November 1966,
President Lyndon Baines Johnson signed an amendment to the Elementary
and Secondary Education Act of 1965, that included Title III: The Adult
Education Act of 1966. The seed was planted from which the Adult
Education and Literacy System of the United States has grown. 

Meeting the People's Needs for Learning

In its strident growth over the last 35 years, the Adult Education and
Literacy System has put to rest the long time elitist belief that when
it comes to education, only those adults with the most education and in
technical, managerial, or professional fields of work at the upper
echelons of society are the ones interested in getting more education.
This idea was quashed by the fact that of the more than 31 million
enrollees in the Adult Education and Literacy System from 1992 through
1999, 7.9 million were the working poor, more than  3.3 million were
welfare recipients, 9.3 million were unemployed and 2.2  million were
incarcerated. More than two-thirds of the 15 million enrollees during
1992-1996 had not completed 12 years of education or received a high
school diploma and over 3.4 million were immigrants. 

For over a third of a century this unique publicly supported adult
education system, made up of partnerships between the states and the
federal government, has worked to meet the needs of adult learners
regardless of language, social, economic, ethnic, gender, or age
differences.

In 2002 we celebrate 35 years of helping millions of adults move from
the margins to the mainstream of American society. With a commitment to
leaving no adults behind, our nation has taken and sustained a course
that promotes social inclusion through the Adult Education and Literacy
System of the United States of America!
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